forbidding and sullen, was such a hardship that Norton shortly
took his leave.

"Well, hang Tom!" he said, as he rode away from Belle Plain. "If
he thinks he can freeze me out there's a long siege ahead of
him!"

Issuing from the lane he turned his face in the direction of
home, but he did not urge his horse off a walk. To leave Belle
Plain and Betty demanded always his utmost resolution. His way
took him into the solemn twilight of untouched solitudes. A cool
breath rippled through the depths of the woods and shaped its own
soft harmonies where it lifted the great branches that arched the
road. He crossed strips of bottom land where the water stood in
still pools about the gnarled and moss-covered trunks of trees.
At intervals down some sluggish inlet he caught sight of the
yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the Arkansas coast
beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that rose out of
the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay along
the horizon.

He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a
sudden turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three
men, and before he could gather up his reins which he held
loosely, one of them had seized his horse by the bit. Norton was
unarmed, he had not even a riding-whip. This being the case he
prepared to make the best of an unpleasant situation which he
felt he could not alter. He ran his eye over the three men.

"I am sorry, gentlemen, but I reckon you have hold of the wrong